What is the Point?

When I first showed the new "Talking
Dollar" cartoon feature of
al-Ummah to some acquaintances, they began
laughing. However, after a day or two, I received a call
from one saying: "You know, there is no need to
stoop to this low level to make your point. I showed the
cartoon to some 'Salafi' brothers and they were very
offended." Caught off guard I replied, "well,
perhaps the tone seems harsh, but we have not targetted
any individual with these cartoons, and you must admit
they make the point extremely well without long-winded
prose."

Later I thought about my answer. I
realized that I had fallen for the usual neo-Salafi
trick, which my acquaintance had also fallen for.
"Bait-and-switch" I believe it is called in
used-car sales parlance. OK, given a cartoon is not the
most scholarly or sophisticated way to make a point. But
think about it. Were the 'Salafis' scholarly or
sophisticated when they denounced those who ask for the
intercession of the Prophet (s) as mushriks,
declared the common Muslims who practice Mawlid as mubtadi`,
and when they declared those who follow imams, shaykhs
and awliya as kaafir? The great thing
about a cartoon is that it gets the point across in a
very succinct manner. And that is the point.

We could spend man-years arguing, from
one electronic forum to another, from one magazine to
another, from one mosque to another. But no one ever gets
it through arguments. 'It' is that the
declaration of someone to be outside of Islam is one of
the greatest of sins--it makes either the caller or the
callee a kaafir! Think about that. Yet, this
statement "you are committing kufr"
is on the tongues of so many hundreds and thousands of
imams, regular college students, Muslim activists and
young people, that one is left wondering "who will
be left within the fold of Islam after they are done with
their declarations?" These young people,
unfortunately, with their lack of Islamic knowledge and
their "Reader's Digest" approach to learning
from a single source, whose propaganda and free booklets
now fill our mosques and Islamic centers, are in many
ways no different than the rabble-rousing crowds who
attacked Sayiddina `Uthman (r), and those who had Imam
Ahmad imprisoned.

So before the gentle reader jumps to
the conclusion that we at al-Ummah are
unnecessarily attacking a certain group or set of people,
let them examine the actions of those who are addressed
by these cartoons: those who would, with one sentence,
put the majority of Muslims outside of the fold of Islam,
by declaring them to be mushrik, kaafir or
deviant.